Trends spanning 36 years of nursing research

PURPOSE: The aim of demonstrating priorities for future research, this study draws on the strengths of text-mining analysis to analyze trends in nursing research in Japan over a 36-year period. METHODS: Documents published in the online version of the Igaku Chuo Zasshi (ICHUSHI) between 1980 and December 2015 were targeted for analysis. Tendencies and trends over time characterizing words used in the titles of all target research papers were analyzed, along with characteristic words. RESULTS: Nursing-related research dropped temporarily, reaching a level of 1,766 papers 1997. Since 2001, however, more than 4,000 papers have been published each year. The most frequently occurring word was “patient,” followed in second and third place by “nurse,” and “nursing student,” respectively. We find two clusters of attributes associated respectively with the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. There was little distance between the attributes for the 2000s and 2010s, for which many more words were extracted than in the previous decades. CONCLUSION: Themes addressed by nursing research are impacted and changed by policy, current events, and the social background. Current priorities in nursing research include “patient and family psychology” and “enhancement of basic nursing education.